Jeff Clement, VP Sales and Operations, SolTech, Inc
If you are confused by the negative economic indicators and conflicted by the not-so-horrible observations of the economy as you see it, you may very well work in the Atlanta IT community.
Take heart! Dig deeper through the statistical maze or simply look around you. The are many bright spots in the local IT industry. While the total number of jobs available jobs are down, candidates with the right balance of technical skills, business acumen and personality are finding they have the opportunity to not only stay employed but trade up to bigger and better jobs.
I am like you. I hear all the doom and gloom media reports but my local observation (based on conversations with customers, prospects and partners) leads me to believe that the following areas are still doing very well:
• Projects related to increasing revenue or decreasing costs are still being funded and being pushed by the company to completion.
• Many small and mid-sized companies are still posting strong financial results.
So what does this mean for you? I would like to share my list of “robust” jobs that have weathered the down turn by not taking as big a hit as other jobs from 2007 to 2008. I would also like to share my list of “fantastic” jobs that I believe have actually increased in demand in the down economy or at less remained steady in demand from 2007 to 2008.
My list of robust jobs includes:
• IT sales
• Oracle DBAs
• OO developers
• C++ developers
• C# developers
Making my list of fantastic jobs:
• Trainers
• Technical writers
• JAVA developers
• .Net developers
• IT recruiters
One final note, the specific industries weathering the downturn seem to include
• Smaller telecommunications companies
• Healthcare companies
• Healthcare IT companies
Remember there are pockets of strong performance in this down economy. Assess your situation realistically in light of the industry, job and local economy. Don’t over react to the national statistics |